Borderlands: The Fallen (28 page)

“Oh I can’t hear it all the time. Just sometimes. I don’t understand most of it. It’s not in our talk. But after a while some of the meaning of the words, it kinda filters down to me—in my mind you know.”

“Berl—about that rapport of yours. Originally, the ship had control of Bizzy, right? So what happens if it takes over again?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, young fella, I got it all worked out. You see, you get a half klick from the ship, it don’t control Bizzy no more. Now—”

“Wait, hold on—we’re closer to the ship than that right now!”

“Well yeah, I s’pose we are, but you know, I got the artifact around my neck here. Long as it’s on me, it kinda runs interference for me, and Bizzy turns to me first. I reckon he thinks I
am
the ship, or some kinda part of it. If he seems like he’s faltering, well, I just touch the artifact here with my hand and I whistle to him and we do our rat-pour, and we connect again, see. Berl ’n’ Bizzy, Bizzy ’n’ Berl, right? So don’t worry your empty little head, boy.”

“That’s not very comforting, Berl. Seems to me like you could lose control of him. And he could fry us both with a spit of that bright blue tobacco juice of his.”

“It’s like I said, me and him, we’re tight now. It don’t matter he’s got alien tech in his head. But if he does waver … I’ll call him back! He’ll come right back to me, you wait and see. Him and me are old pals …”

Zac sighed. “You’d better be right. What else you know about the alien ship?”

“The monitor notices you more if you move. And … there’s one other thing I’ve been noticin’.”

“What’s that, Berl?”

“Don’t you see it? The ship is lighting up! It’s shining out more than it was. I’ve noticed it since I come here. It had a twinkle or two but really the ship used to look kinda dead except for the monitor, and the UnderBodies. That alien ship is coming alive!”

Late afternoon and Roland, Crannigan, Rosco, and Rans Veritas stood in a tense group at the entrance to a gorge leading up to the foot of the broken volcano.

“We’re not wasting any more time looking for that damn kid,” Crannigan growled. “We’re moving on. Face it, the skags had a nice meal and left us alone. So he was good for something.”

Roland almost punched Crannigan at that last remark. He surprised himself, feeling that strongly about it. He must’ve gotten too attached to the kid. Stupid to get attached to anyone on Pandora. Look what happened with McNee.

Roland kept himself in check. Rosco was on Crannigan’s team and Rosco was good in a fight. He was watching Roland closely, eyes narrowed. Crannigan was a deadly fighter himself, and he had that Eridian rifle in his hands.
Roland’s shield wouldn’t stand up to it for more than one good pulse.

Roland had his own Eridian weapon, taken from the bandit cache—a Thunder Storm electric shotgun—but it was stowed in the outrunner as he didn’t like handling Eridian weapons too often. He suspected contact with Eridium of causing the mutation of ordinary miners into Psycho Bandits.

“Rans here tried to find the kid,” Rosco said. “You tried. Can’t be done. It’s too damn late, no matter what.”

Roland snorted. “Rans says he followed the skags that took the kid. I found drag marks, and Ran’s footprints—for a while, till he got to the glass plain. Didn’t find any skag tracks anywhere. And skags don’t range that far from their dens. No sign of ’em around here for two or three klicks at least.”

“What are you saying?” Rans demanded. “You’re saying I’m a liar?”

“Never doubted you were a liar,” Roland said calmly. “From the moment I met you. And you didn’t like that kid. He worried you, for some reason.”

“What you think I did, sell him to the bandits?” Rans said, grinning nastily. “You seen any bandits around here?”

“No. But … I’ve seen tunnel rats.” He watched Rans’s face as he said it. And there did seem to be a flicker of tension there. A sick feeling went through him. Had the shifty old hustler turned the boy over to tunnel rats?

If he did, the kid was probably dead. Which would give Roland yet another score to settle.

Roland groaned inwardly, annoyed with himself for
getting soft. But he had to know what happened to Cal. That kid had counted on him …

On the other hand—the boy’s father might be in the area. The kid could have stumbled into him. He might be with him now—which meant he might be at the alien crash site. Looked like it was going to be necessary to cover both possibilities. And he did want to see that crash site. His interest had gotten ever more piqued.

“Tell you what I’m gonna do,” Roland said. “You go on ahead and I’ll catch up to you—maybe in a few hours. Follow the gorge up toward the volcano. I’ll leave the outrunner here—but I’m taking the Zodiac Turret with me. It won’t be of much use to you anyhow—it’s attuned to protect me and me only.”

“That wasn’t the deal,” Crannigan said coldly.

“I’ll be there when it gets rough,” Roland said, giving Crannigan a significant look. “We’ve got a deal.”

“Okay, whatever,” Crannigan grunted. But he wasn’t pleased.

Roland just stood there, waiting, unwilling to turn his back on Crannigan right now.

Crannigan shrugged, and led the other men away, grumbling to himself. “A fucking kid. Should have known that’d fuck things up.”

Roland waited till they’d moved off far enough up the trail, then he turned, retrieved the Zodiac Turret, which he’d set up on their backtrail; he folded it into carry mode, slung it on his back, and jogged down the trail and back to the glassy plain. A half hour of sweaty trotting took him to the outrunner. He found a water jug, drank about half of it, then got in the outrunner and started it off, following
the sandy fringe of the glass plain—almost immediately running into scythids. Some of them spat venom at him, burning a hole in the seat next to him. He ran over four of them till they got the idea and dove into the sand.

Another few minutes and he reached the opening to the trail leading up through the bluffs where they’d made camp. He parked the outrunner where the others could see it, got the Eridian electric shotgun out, and started off along the glass plain toward the tunnel rat maze.

He cut across the glass plain, some of the way, to get there quicker, putting on his tinted goggles against the sunlight gleaming on the glazed ground. He leaned into it, going as quickly as he could … and came to the nearest of the rat tunneler excavations visible from above.

“Still time to talk yourself out of this,” he muttered. “This is close to suicidal …”

But there was no talking himself out of it. He knew damn well he was going in.

He had three protean grenades. Time to use one up getting in.

He backed up, flattened down, activated the grenade, and tossed it at the dark spot on the glass plain. He covered his face a split second before the explosion. Crude glass splinters zinged over him; debris rained down.

Roland sighed, thinking:
That’ll bring the sons of bitches running. No hope for sneaking in …

He got up and checked his weaponry. Zodiac, Eridian Thunder Storm, a pistol on each hip, knife. However this came out, there would be fewer tunnel rats, come the end.

“Well,” Roland said, “I’m just burning daylight. So …”

He ran to the hole blasted through the surface, over the
excavation. Just big enough. He stepped over and dropped, landing with a grunt on the balls of his feet three meters down. He recovered his footing and looked around. The corridor he’d landed in was flooded with sunlight from above—but the farther doorway was dark. Behind him—just rock. This branch of the colony tunnels ended here.

Good thing he’d gotten a night-seeing mod for his goggles at Fyrestone. Roland switched it on, and the darkness became a sharply defined green and red tunnel—with the reddish shape of a tunnel rat running toward him, gas mask pushed back, oversized buck teeth bared. It had a pistol in its hand, firing. Roland’s shield repelled the bullets.

He couldn’t see a shield on this rat. No sense in wasting recharge time. When the tunnel rat got close enough, he simply smashed in its head, crushing his skull completely with the butt of his gun. It folded up at his feet, stone dead.

But the three coming at him from down the tunnel were quite alive—and firing larger-caliber weapons.

The rounds hit Roland’s shield, making him stagger back, his shield flickering. Roland snarled and shouted, “Mess with the bull and you get the horns!” as he fired the Thunder Storm. The electric pellets flashed out and struck the first tunnel rat straight on, penetrating his shield, so that he was flung backward. The others were struck by the rebounding shots ricocheting around like tiny meteors in the corridor, coming at the tunnel rats from every angle, tearing into them, making them dance with electrical charge. One of them, staggering, had a strong shield and got through, eyes ablaze with electricity, shaking but firing a submachine gun at Roland.

Roland returned fire, blasting at the rat’s legs so the shot would not only take him out but would ricochet to take out the taller tunnel rat coming around the corner behind him. Down both tunnel rats went, screaming, crackling, electrocuted and bleeding, their wounds spitting sparks as well as spurting blood.

There were half a dozen bodies in the tunnel now. The tunnel rats would be worrying about adding to that pile—so they’d try rockets or grenades, if they had any. He needed to forestall anyone coming close enough till he had a chance to figure out how to get an edge on these scraping scumbags. He could hear them arguing back there, in the tunnel, their feet scuffling on the floor.

“We must charge him again! He cannot kill ten!”

“He is big, he will make a fine meal!”

“You wish to be in the forefront of the ten, Broncus? I thought not!”

Roland unshipped the Zodiac Turret and set it up, fast as he could. It did some of the work itself and soon the tripod was humming, the gun conning back and forth, looking for enemies.

He retreated into the room at the end of the tunnel, a few steps behind the turret—just as a phalanx of tunnel rats tried a charge. The gun chattered and spat bursts of bullets, a powerful caliber that penetrated most shields—the tunnel rats went down, or scurried back, yelping with pain and fear.

Roland chuckled. “I love that damn thing. It’s like having another soldier in the field.” He stepped closer to the archway and shouted, “Tunnel rats! You listening down there!”

“We are not rats! We are men!” someone shouted back. “We are tunnelers! We are members of the Sacred Guild of Mining Engineers!”

“Right, right,” Roland said. “But there’s like ten of you at least that are dead mining engineers about now! You want there to be more dead mining engineers? Or you going to give me what I need?”

There was considerable muttered discussion. Then he heard, “Do you really think you can kill all of us? If we must we’ll drown your tunnel in fire! We’ll use every bomb we have stored away!”

“I got the best shield there is!” Roland yelled, lying through his teeth. “I can take down a hundred of you creepy little bastards before I fold up! And if you bitches creep away, I’ll just hunt you through the tunnels! Or you can cooperate—’cause what I want from you ain’t so much!”

More muttering. Then, “What is it you require?”

“I’m gonna tell you what I want to know and if I don’t get honest answers I’m going to start using my
big
weapons! Now listen—you had a kid in there, right? A boy! You caught him recently! Right? I wanna know, is he alive—or dead!”

A long period of muttering, argument, hissing. “We cannot agree … we send the one responsible to talk to you …”

The one responsible? What did they mean by that? Roland wondered. “Send him unarmed then!”

“You must neutralize your turret!”

“I’ll do it—but if any more than one comes it fires again!”

Roland looked around the stone corner, down the
corridor. He couldn’t see the tunnel rats but he could make out their shadows, from around another corner. He reached out, reset the turret. “It’s set to let one through! Just one!”

Another lie. It didn’t have that refinement. It was completely neutralized. But there were so many weapons modifications, the tunnel rats couldn’t know for sure.

Roland drew back, and waited.

In a moment, a tunnel rat, in a gas mask, came up the tunnel, his grimy, clawed hands raised.

“And who the hell would you be?” Roland asked, stepping partly into view and pointing the Eridian shotgun.

“My name is Broncus.” He rubbed his hands together nervously, wringing them. “We had the boy. And his mother. But …”

His mother? “Yeah, what happened to them? You digesting them right now?”

“No, unfortunately. They escaped.”

“I told you I’d know if you were lying!”

“I’m not! The woman used a disguise, a gas mask, and … I don’t want to discuss it. But she took the boy with her. It was tragic! Right before the feast!”

“Yeah? Well …” He noticed the tunnel rat looking speculatively at his muscles as if wondering how juicy the meat would be. “You can forget eating me. I’ll burn myself into a cinder before I end up in your intestines. Now listen—I’ve decided you’re telling the truth. Just tell me this, how long ago was this?”

“I don’t know. Some hours. It was daylight, not quite sun-overhead. They went out the farthest-most southeast entrance, near the cliffs!”

“I gotcha. Okay, you cooperated, so back you go, down the tunnel. Hey!” He called to the others. “Your pal Broncus here just saved you about thirty lives, at least, so you better thank him and make him your head negotiator or some shit! Now all of you back off and … wait. Hold on …”

It occurred to him that he didn’t want to go through the tunnels to find a way out. That’d leave him too vulnerable to sneak attack.

“One last thing!” Roland called out. “I know you ‘engineers’ gotta know about ladders, right? Get me one and I’m gone! Nobody else dies! And just think … these other losers here I killed … they’ll make a nice feast!”

“Very true!” said Broncus, brightening. “Everyone should be of service … or be a serving … to the colony. I will see about your ladder. It’s such a shame you can’t stay for dinner …”